Sunday, July 21, 2013

It's great to be back in Thailand. It does feel like coming home now, which is a strange realization. I know how things work here, I can order food and get around Bangkok and Chiang Mai without desperately clutching a map, and ride a motorbike without worrying about the right side of the road (which is actually the left side. Aeeii!).

Chiang Mai was great - I spent most of the time reading and walking around Old City while Douglas went on a meditation retreat and tried a rock climbing course. We both took a cooking class, which was a rapid-fire introduction to Thai recipes.

Hot Basil Chicken and Chicken & Cashew. DELICIOUS!

In an unrelated food adventure, I found AMERICAN CHILI!! It was delicious and spicy and they had CHEESE which is rare, and no sour cream which was disappointing but not surprising. I had this twice. It was GOOOOOD!

Delicious chili - it tastes like proper home-cooked food! And they had CHEESE! No sour cream though...

In Chiang Mai, we visited Wat Pra Singh and attended "Monk Chat." This is an outreach program established by many of the temples to help monks practice their English and also educated visitors about monastery life. Most of the volunteer monks were in their late teens and spoke mediocre English at best, and funnily enough, many weren't especially well versed in Buddhism. Monks attend novice school for 4-5 years before they become a full monk (no younger than 20 years old), so most of the people we met were still in the learning process and we were teaching them as much as they taught us.

Playing checkers against the monks, and losing. Badly.

Monk chat, aka Tadzeo's fan club

We then traveled to Pai, which is in the mountains ~3 hours north of Chiang Mai. The road is brutal - it has 763 hairpin, blind turns. Egads. The journey was worth it though! We met a girl Rachel from Florida, Tal from Israel, Anne from Holland, and Jack from the Philippines. There are lots of fun backpackers around and every day people rent motorbikes to the waterfalls, canyon, and mountain roads around here. It's truly gorgeous and I'm having a lovely time relaxing and visiting all the natural beauty!